Himalayan Bamboo

2007-10-04

The time is fastly approaching for my yearly trip to the Valley. The days are getting shorter here in Denmark, the rain stingier, the trees golden, good reasons to do like birds... fly South!Alas the booking of flights for me and my friend Steen is difficult, and MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE than in the years past! It seems that one of the good things (the ONLY GOOD THING!) of the Maobadi Troubles is creation of vast Nepali Diaspora. And Nepalis, industrious and hard working and polite and reliable and trustworthy have MADE IT, both in the US, Australia and of course here in Europe!!! So of course they have bread to fly home for Dasain... Look at the composition of travellers to KTM in the airline departure lounges: nowadays 60-80% are Nepalis & Tibetans! so it came as no0 surprise that my - and Nepalis' too! - favorite airline THAI is fully booked out from Bangkok...

2007-07-31

SLATEfighting words

God-Fearing People

Why are we so scared of offending Muslims?

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, July 30, 2007, at 12:33 PM ET

During the greater part of last week, Slate's sister site On Faith (it is jointly produced by Newsweek and washingtonpost.com, both owned by the Washington Post Co., which also owns Slate) gave itself over to a discussion about the religion of Islam. As usual in such cases, the search for "moderate" versions of this faith was under way before the true argument had even begun. If I were a Muslim myself, I think that this search would be the most "offensive" part of the business. Why must I prove that my deepest belief is compatible with moderation?

Unless I am wrong, a sincere Muslim need only affirm that there is one god, and only one, and that the Prophet Mohammed was his messenger, bringing thereby the final words of God to humanity. Certain practices are supposed to follow this affirmation, including a commitment to pray five times a day, a promise to pay a visit to Mecca if such a trip should be possible, fasting during Ramadan, and a pious vow to give alms to the needy. The existence of djinns, or devils, is hard to disavow because it was affirmed by the prophet. An obligation of jihad is sometimes mentioned, and some quite intelligent people argue about whether "holy war" is meant to mean a personal struggle or a political one. No real Islamic authority exists to decide this question, and those for whom the personal is highly political have recently become rather notorious.

Thus, Islamic belief, however simply or modestly it may be stated, is an extreme position to begin with. No human being can possibly claim to know that there is a God at all, or that there are, or were, any other gods to be repudiated. And when these ontological claims have collided, as they must, with their logical limits, it is even further beyond the cognitive capacity of any person to claim without embarrassment that the lord of creation spoke his ultimate words to an unlettered merchant in seventh-century Arabia. Those who utter such fantastic braggings, however many times a day they do so, can by definition have no idea what they are talking about. (I hasten to add that those who boast of knowing about Moses parting the Red Sea, or about a virgin with a huge tummy, are in exactly the same position.) Finally, it turns out to be impossible to determine whether jihad means more alms-giving or yet more zealous massacre of, say, Shiite Muslims.

Why, then, should we be commanded to "respect" those who insist that they alone know something that is both unknowable and unfalsifiable? Something, furthermore, that can turn in an instant into a license for murder and rape? As one who has occasionally challenged Islamic propaganda in public and been told that I have thereby "insulted 1.5 billion Muslims," I can say what I suspect—which is that there is an unmistakable note of menace behind that claim. No, I do not think for a moment that Mohammed took a "night journey" to Jerusalem on a winged horse. And I do not care if 10 billion people intone the contrary. Nor should I have to. But the plain fact is that the believable threat of violence undergirds the Muslim demand for "respect."

Before me is a recent report that a student at Pace University in New York City has been arrested for a hate crime in consequence of an alleged dumping of the Quran. Nothing repels me more than the burning or desecration of books, and if, for example, this was a volume from a public or university library, I would hope that its mistreatment would constitute a misdemeanor at the very least. But if I choose to spit on a copy of the writings of Ayn Rand or Karl Marx or James Joyce, that is entirely my business. When I check into a hotel room and send my free and unsolicited copy of the Gideon Bible or the Book of Mormon spinning out of the window, I infringe no law, except perhaps the one concerning litter. Why do we not make this distinction in the case of the Quran? We do so simply out of fear, and because the fanatical believers in that particular holy book have proved time and again that they mean business when it comes to intimidation. Surely that should be to their discredit rather than their credit. Should not the "moderate" imams of On Faith have been asked in direct terms whether they are, or are not, negotiating with a gun on the table?

The Pace University incident becomes even more ludicrous and sinister when it is recalled that Islamists are the current leaders in the global book-burning competition. After the rumor of a Quran down the toilet in Guantanamo was irresponsibly spread, a mob in Afghanistan burned down an ancient library that (as President Hamid Karzai pointed out dryly) contained several ancient copies of the same book. Not content with igniting copies of The Satanic Verses, Islamist lynch parties demanded the burning of its author as well. Many distinguished authors, Muslim and non-Muslim, are dead or in hiding because of the words they have put on pages concerning the unbelievable claims of Islam. And it is to appease such a spirit of persecution and intolerance that a student in New York City has been arrested for an expression, however vulgar, of an opinion.

This has to stop, and it has to stop right now. There can be no concession to shariain the United States. When will we see someone detained, or even cautioned, for advocating the burning of books in the name of God? If the police are honestly interested in this sort of "hate crime," I can help them identify those who spent much of last year uttering physical threats against the republication in this country of some Danish cartoons. In default of impartial prosecution, we have to insist that Muslims take their chance of being upset, just as we who do not subscribe to their arrogant certainties are revolted every day by the hideous behavior of the parties of God.

It is often said that resistance to jihadism only increases the recruitment to it. For all I know, this commonplace observation could be true. But, if so, it must cut both ways. How about reminding the Islamists that, by their mad policy in Kashmir and elsewhere, they have made deadly enemies of a billion Indian Hindus? Is there no danger that the massacre of Iraqi and Lebanese Christians, or the threatened murder of all Jews, will cause an equal and opposite response? Most important of all, what will be said and done by those of us who take no side in filthy religious wars? The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant, or neutral, without inviting their own suicide. And the advocates and apologists of bigotry and censorship and suicide-assassination cannot be permitted to take shelter any longer under the umbrella of a pluralism that they openly seek to destroy.

2007-06-07

June 06, 2007, 6:00 a.m.

European LessonsThe Last Days of Europe show how immigration is at the root of Europe's current problems.

By Stanley Kurtz

Can uncontrolled immigration kill a continent?According to Walter Laqueur, it already has.Laqueur, an historian who’s spent a lifetime moving between America and Europe, is a scholar and public intellectual of international stature.So it’s news when the latest book from so knowledgeable and unimpeachable a friend of Europe echoes and extends the themes of a pugnacious series of American tracts on European decline.Whether European intellectuals will be able to dismiss Laqueur’s The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent, just as they’ve dismissed so many other such books, is an open question.(It’s tough to discount a book endorsed by Henry Kissinger and Niall Ferguson.)What’s certain is that, in the midst of our own immigration debate, Americans cannot afford to ignore The Last Days of Europe.

Immigration DisasterIn combination with Europe’s demographic decline and guilt-laden multiculturalism, says Laqueur, unchecked immigration has created a massive and growing population of unassimilated Muslims, hostile to their own countries and determined to transform Europe beyond all recognition, through a combination of violent and non-violent means.“Why had the European countries brought these [Islamist] attacks upon themselves?” asks Laqueur.“Above all,” he says, “it was naïveté that had made possible the indiscriminate immigration of earlier decades.”In his concluding reflection on what went wrong for Europe, Laqueur singles out immigration as first among causal equals:“...uncontrolled immigration was not the only reason for the decline of Europe.But taken together with the continent’s other misfortunes, it led to a profound crisis; a miracle might be needed to extract Europe from these predicaments.”

In Laqueur’s telling, the trouble began “when European countries recruited workers abroad to do the work European workers were not willing or able to do.”Only about half of the (supposedly temporary) guest workers who came to Europe during the boom years of the 1960s returned home as initially planned.“Others stayed on legally or illegally and in many cases brought relatives to join them, and the host governments were not willing to enforce the law against those who broke it.”When Europe’s boom gave out following the OPEC oil shock in 1973, governments stopped issuing work visas.But that didn’t stop immigration.Relatives flowed in legally, through family reunification laws, and illegally, as immigrant smuggling became a major business.

There followed a flood of asylum seekers, to whom the authorities were “quite liberal in their approach, even though the majority of these immigrants, probably the great majority, were not political refugees but ‘economic migrants....’”Many were Islamists, others hoped to establish criminal gangs, “but all asylum seekers, whether legitimate or illegitimate, were supported by a powerful lobby, the human rights associations and churches that provided legal and other aid.They claimed it was scandalous and in violation of elementary human rights to turn back new immigrants and that in case of doubt mercy should prevail.”

As supposed asylum seekers poured in, they destroyed their papers, making it impossible for European authorities to deport them.What’s more, “border controls inside Europe were largely abolished and if an immigrant had put foot into one European country he could move freely to another.”Laqueur adds that the “number of asylum seekers, real and bogus, began to decline after 2002, following the introduction of more stringent screening measures.”But by then it was too late; Europe had entered its “last days.”

It should have been clear early on that immigration was creating serious problems, says Laqueur.Muslim resistance to assimilation was evident, as were the warning signs of demographic decline. And had it been clear, it is hardly the case that nothing could have been done about it. After all, says Laqueur, “illegal immigrants to Japan or China, Singapore, or virtually any other country would have been sent back within days, if not hours, to their countries of origin.” Yet because all this was ignored, says Laqueur, we now face “the end of Europe as a major player in world affairs.”Almost overnight, Laqueur continues, “what had been considered a minor problem on a local level is becoming a major political issue, for there is growing resistance on the part of the native [European] population, who resent becoming strangers in their own homelands.Perhaps they are wrong to react in this way, but they have not been aware until recently of this trend, and no one ever asked or consulted them.”

What Were They Thinking?Laqueur returns several times to the failure of Europe’s authorities to consult with the public on immigration.Instead of putting the matter up for debate, government and corporations quietly and unilaterally set policy.Europe’s elite had a bad conscience, given memories of refugees from Nazi Germany who’d been turned away decades earlier.There was also the omnipresent “fear of being accused of racism.”This bizarre combination of multiculturalism and complete disregard for the significance of culture opened up a huge gulf between Europe’s elite and the public — a gulf that emerged openly when France and The Netherlands rejected the proposed EU constitution (in part over concerns about Muslim immigration and the accession of Turkey to the EU).There was, says Laqueur, “a backlash against the elites who wanted to impose their policies on a population who had not been consulted....Another important motive was the reluctance to hand over national sovereignty to central, remote and anonymous institutions over which people had no control.”

Laqueur concludes that it’s next to impossible for an historian to establish just what it was that Europe’s authorities were thinking when they formulated the immigration practices now undermining Western civilization in its very cradle. To the question “Did they imagine that uncontrolled immigration would not involve major problems?”Laqueur responds that it is unanswerable.(My guess is that, like today’s market-based immigration advocates in America, European leaders were focused on the immediate need for labor and gave little if any thought to long-term social consequences.In other words, the simplest explanation for Laqueur’s inability to track down the deep thoughts of Europe’s leaders about the cultural consequences of immigration is that there never were any such thoughts.)

But why should mass immigration have been a problem for Europe when the need for labor was (and is) real, and when modern dynamos like America and Australia were virtually built on mass immigration?Part of the answer lies in Europe’s relative lack of experience with immigration and assimilation.Yet there’s more at work, as Laqueur shows, through a comparison of post-WWII Muslim immigration with the wave of Jewish migration to both Western Europe and the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Culture CountsJews entered Western Europe in that period by the tens of thousands, not by the millions.They also made great efforts to integrate, above all seeking a good secular education for their children, at almost any price.There was no welfare state in those days — no social workers, no subsidized housing, no free medical payments, and no social security.Back then, it was sink or swim, whereas the modern welfare state has removed the incentives for success that used to force cultural integration.When they first arrived in Britain, Laqueur tells us, many Bangladeshis were reluctant to accept government assistance, viewing welfare payments as dishonorable and contrary to Islam.It was only the advice of social workers that managed to turn welfare dependence into a way of life for these Bangladeshi migrants.

That doesn’t mean Laqueur discounts the influence of Muslim culture on failed integration — far from it.The Last Days of Europe is being touted for its measured tone, in contrast to, say, the blistering (and blisteringly funny and effective) polemics of Mark Steyn’s America Alone. That’s an accurate assessment, up to a point.If there was even a single joke in The Last Days of Europe, I missed it.Yet Laqueur has no tolerance whatever for political correctness, and doesn’t mince words.For example, Laqueur’s extended critique of “Islamophobia” as an explanation for failed Muslim assimilation in Europe is devastating.Laqueur doesn’t hesitate to say that the fundamental problem of Muslim assimilation is cultural — rooted in traditional Islam, and in the strange blend of Muslim mores and ghetto street-culture that nowadays shapes Europe’s angry young Muslim men.

Far from distancing himself from conservative critiques of Europe, Laqueur embraces them, invoking conservative writers like Theodore Dalrymple and The Weekly Standard’s Gerard Alexander.Laqueur even argues that the term “barbarian” can be applied with justice to the actions of some lawless young Muslim men.He also takes seriously the possibility of a violent Muslim revolution in Europe.Laqueur’s tone may be calm, but his substance is explosive — and very much of a piece with the long train of “conservative” books on European decline.

The Last Days of Europe is a book about culture.Laqueur rejects the cultural blindness of economic elites who see immigration in strictly market terms.He rejects racism and xenophobia as explanations of failed Muslim integration, in favor of a cultural account.He rejects economic explanations for the decline of Europe itself, insisting instead that the erosion of strong families, relativism, and a loss of faith in the future are at the root of Europe’s problems.(Laqueur unashamedly invokes Gibbon here.)

DelusionsLaqueur is convinced that Europeans (and their liberal American admirers) have been living in a state of “delusion.”He is ruthless in skewering a series of recent American books touting Europe as the world’s emerging “soft superpower,” a continent destined to lead the world through its exemplary combination of benevolence and justice.The notion that the hard-eyed powers of the world will — on the basis of sheer inspiration — come to emulate European rule of law comes in for polite ridicule by Laqueur.The Last Days of Europe’s fascinating chapter on Russia is a case study in failed expectations for democratic and market universalism, and therefore also a study in the recalcitrance of culture.

Europe’s disastrous and deluded decline is so obvious to Laqueur that he expends considerable energy wondering out loud how anyone could ever have taken the world-wide triumph of European “soft power” seriously to begin with.Reading Laqueur, it’s tough not to notice parallels between the leftist fantasy of a pacifist, rule-bound world and the Bush administration’s own overconfidence in the power of exemplary democracy.The Bush administration’s willingness to use military force is generally contrasted with the European (and American) Left’s abhorrence of force and preference for soft power.Yet the two positions are less at odds than meets the eye.

True, the president’s strategy required that military force be used to implant democracy in the heart of the Muslim world.Yet the plan was to avoid the need for a heavy military “footprint” in Iraq, or for military actions against other powers, by allowing democracy’s allegedly universal appeal to spread spontaneously through both Iraq and the region.The Western Left adheres to an only slightly different fantasy of democratic contagion.If the Bush administration unwisely depended on the domino effect of elections in Iraq, the fantasy of a “soft superpower” depends on the supposed domino effect of policies like the abolition of capital punishment and rule by the International Criminal Court.

Like many others, Laqueur roots Europe’s fall in its relativism, multiculturalism and — to speak more bluntly — Europe’s simple lack of confidence in its own values.Yet Laqueur’s account could be read to make the opposite point.Underneath all that guilt and cultural deference lies overweening and unwarranted self-confidence.Europe’s delusional belief in its ability to lead the world without force — through exemplary justice alone — rests on a profoundly “ethnocentric” conviction of its own moral superiority.

This same self-confidence helps explain why Europe’s elites discounted the cultural challenge of immigration.Insofar as they bothered to consider the issue, the unthought-out assumption was that liberal modernism’s superiority would be seen, acknowledged, and therefore eventually adopted by Muslim immigrants.So it turns out the Europe’s old ethnocentric “social evolutionism” — the notion that the world’s “barbarian nations” would sooner or later adopt the West’s superior ways — has never really disappeared.Nowadays, however, instead of inspiring sacrifice and justifying imperial force, the social evolutionism obviates the need for either; it’s an ideology of superiority, without cost or hard work — cultural superiority as pure wish-fulfillment.

The West would do better to have confidence in its own values, while also recognizing that our values are our own — and are therefore unlikely to be spontaneously adopted by others.It is a characteristic weakness of liberal democracy to assume its own universal appeal, while taking democracy’s cultural pre-requisites for granted.Precisely because the West now imports populations who lack the cultural pre-requisites for democracy and market capitalism, the immigration issue has the power to explode democracy’s characteristic cultural naïveté (if it doesn’t explode democracy itself first).

America’s DebateEven as Europe’s immigration-wrought crisis grows, America is facing its own immigration debate.The parallels to Laqueur’s European story are obvious: jobs Europeans won’t do, uncontrolled legal and illegal migration, failure to enforce the law — especially after the initial crossing at the border — the abuse of family reunification provisions, melodramas of outrage by human rights groups, bogus but paralyzing accusations of racism and xenophobia, and sheer obliviousness on the part of business and government elites about the long-term social and cultural implications of uncontrolled immigration.Even the European public’s outrage at being cut out of immigration decision-making has its American parallel in the attempt to railroad through a gigantic immigration bill in just days, with virtually no debate — and the public outrage that’s followed.

But what about differences between the American and European experiences with immigration?American immigration is largely Hispanic.If culture is important, then surely Mexican immigrants should be judged culturally closer to Americans than Muslims are to Europeans.True enough, but this is far too simple a response.

For starters, Muslim immigration is a non-trivial issue even in America, as the terror plots at Fort Dix and JFK Airport show.(See “Look to Europe.”) For another thing, Mexican immigrants in the United States are reproducing some of the problems of Muslim immigrants in Europe.Chain migration through family reunification can transport entire extended families — even whole villages — from Mexico to the United States, and that creates serious barriers to assimilation (see “Chain, Chain, Chain”). The problems of Mexican immigrant families in America are very different from the problems of extended immigrant Muslim clans in Europe, yet in many ways they are equally severe, as Heather MacDonald shows in her remarkable article, “Hispanic Family Values?”

NightmareIn focusing on immigration, I’ve given short-shrift to the bold, subtle, hopeful, piercing, and absolutely terrifying dissection of Europe’s prospects at the conclusion of Laqueur’s book.The Last Days of Europe’s chilling climax is not to be missed.But the terrifying fate of Europe is precisely what we need to avoid.While America may not yet be in Europe’s dire straights, it would be sheer madness to for the United States to repeat Europe’s deadly immigration mistakes — at the very moment when the depth of the continent’s tragic errors are emerging into the light of day.

Reporter Andrew Higgins describes the doyen of disbelief -- commander of the faith-less -- strutting onto the stage of Caen’s 500-seat Alexis de Tocqueville auditorium, dressed in black from head to toe, to deliver the latest two-hour installment in his on-going lecture series, “Hedonist Philosophy,” to a packed house.

Hedonism popular in France? You heard it here first.

Apparently, the Hedonist Philosophy does not consist of “pass the bonbons and heated body-oil,” (that's Hefner's Playboy Philosophy -- as he pretentiously calls it) but includes such priceless gems as, “To enjoy and make others enjoy without doing ill to yourself or to others, this is the foundation of all morality.” Catchy.

Did Mother Teresa enjoy picking the dying off the streets of Calcutta? But is not enjoyment the foundation of all morality?

According to the Journal, the rise of secularism on steroids is spurred by “alarm over Islam …. Europe’s Muslim population, estimated at between 15 and 20 million, is growing more numerous, more vocal and, in some cases, more religious,” as well as the nagging fear that “religion is making a comeback.”

Among other signs of an increasingly assertive impiety, the article cites a debate in London last month, where atheists and believers squared off over the proposition: “We’d be better off without God” (according to a vote of the audience, the atheists won by an almost 2-to-1 margin), a spate of belief-bashing books (including Christopher Hitchens forthcoming “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’), a German furniture manufacturer who’s funding an “Enlightenment think-tank,” Britain’s National Secular Society (whose membership doubled in 4 years, to a staggering 7,000 – there are individual churches in the U.S with more members) and the declaration of that great thinker, Elton John, that religion turns people into “hateful lemmings” and should be banned – some have said the same of his music.

Militant atheism in the land of Jacobinism? What is it the French say, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

French atheism of today is a shadow of its former self. Anti-clericalism reached its high-water mark during the Reign of Terror. On September 2, 1792, three Catholic bishops and more than 200 priests were massacred by a Parisian street mob. Priests and nuns were among the mass executions in Lyon and hundreds were imprisoned in what were described as “abominable conditions” in the port city of Rochefort.

The anti-religious tradition of Revolutionary France was bequeathed to the two 20th century ideologies it spawned – Nazism and communism. In the Soviet Union, from 1922-1941, The League of the Militant Godless organized and directed atheistic agit-prop.

By 1941, the League had more than 3.5 million members and 96,000 offices across the country. Still, God always has the last laugh. When Mikhail Gorbachev met John Paul II, the former confided that his grandmother had him baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church as a child.

As for a religious renaissance in Europe, Onfray and his allies needn’t worry.

True, there was a fuss when the new European Constitution engaged in historical revisionism on a grand scale, by refusing to acknowledge the continent’s Christian roots stretching back a millennium.

Aleksander Kwasnieski, then president of Poland, observed: “I am an atheist and everybody knows it, but there are no excuses for making references to ancient Greece and Rome, without making references to the Christian values which are so important to the development of Europe.

Protests over the EU bureaucracy’s re-writing of history aside, for many Europeans, faith is increasingly irrelevant. Europe has the lowest church-attendance in the world.

Not coincidentally, the continent is in a demographic tail-spin. Of the 10 nations with the lowest birthrates, nine are in Europe (the 10th is Japan). Currently, 1.5 children are born for every woman in the EU. In some countries, the rate is as low as 1.1.

It takes 2.1 births per woman merely to replace current population. If present trends continue, Europe’s population could decline by 88 million in the next 15 years – a loss of 23% of its 2000 population.

Why not coincidentally? From religion comes hope for the future and a sense of societal obligation (i.e., a non-hedonistic worldview). No faith, no hope. No hope for the future, no sense of obligation – hence, no children.

The United States has both the highest birthrate (2.11) and the highest church attendance in the industrialized world. Domestically, demographic differences parallel religious observance. Salt Lake City and Tupelo, Mississippi have higher fertility rates than Manhattan and San Francisco.

It makes perfect sense (in a cosmic sense). Consider: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live,” Deuteronomy, 30:1.You choose life (God), you get life (descendants). You choose death, you don’t.

I don’t know who represented faith in the London debate, but it couldn’t have been the A-Team. By every index, active believers are happier, healthier, more successful and more charitable than secularists. Karl Zinsmeister documented this in his recent article “Good Faith,” in American Enterprise Magazine.

·A Harvard study showed inner-city youth with a “strong religious orientation” 54% less likely to use drugs than their peers.

·According to the U.S. government’s National Survey of Family Growth, only 7% of couples who attend services once a month will divorce within the first 5 years of marriage. The rate for those who go to church once a year or less is 2 ½ times higher.

·Statistics from the charitable clearing house Independent Sector show that, on average, weekly churchgoers donate 3.8% of their income to charity, compared to 0.8% for those who never go.

·According to a University of Chicago nationwide survey of 2,000 physicians (not cited by Zinsmeister), 2 in 5 doctors think belief in God reduces the incidence of a host of diseases and other health problems – including heart attacks.

What do atheists have to offer in place of God to give meaning to life – democracy, human rights, reason, la dolce vita?

The dignity of the individual was first proclaimed at Sinai. The Torah sets forth individual rights and responsibilities. Democracy got a huge impetus from the Protestant Reformation.

From the French Revolution to the blood-drenched isms of the 20th century, more people were killed in the name of reason – liberty, equality and fraternity, or “scientific” socialism, or “scientific” theories of race – than in all of the religious wars spanning the course of history combined.

The idea that atheists can stop the Islamic advance could only make sense to a modern European.

You can’t beat something with nothing. Atheism isn’t a values system, but the negation of a values system.

Whatever you think of it, Islam is a fighting creed. (Though some would say it more resembles an ideology than a religion.) Adherents are oriented in the universe. They’re given a mission (purpose) in life, and a vision of reward and punishment in the afterlife.

It’s not immigration alone that’s driving the Islamacization of Europe. Europeans also are converting to Islam. Strangely, they seem not to find fulfillment in 4-day work weeks, soccer-mania, hedonist philosophies or the anemic version of Christianity prevalent in many parts of the continent.

Even some devout unbelievers are driven by self-interest to take religion seriously.

In October, 2005, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, archbishop of Genoa, returned from a trip to Cuba with startling news – “Fidel Castro is asking us (the Catholic Church) for help to combat the plague of abortion in Cuba,” Bertone disclosed.

"The spread of abortion, as Fidel Castro emphasized, is among the causes of the country’s demographic crisis,” the archbishop added. Cuba has the lowest birthrate in Latin America and the Caribbean, well below replacement level. And, no one is immigrating to the workers’ tropical paradise.

So, where does Fidel turn to combat abortion and stop Cuba’s demographic suicide? To an institution he proclaimed his mortal enemy after the 1959 revolution.

Here’s another irony: As noted above, Michel Onfray, the archbishop of atheism, spoke at the 500-seat Alexis de Tocqueville auditorium.

De Tocqueville was a French aristocrat whose family was guillotined during the Reign of Terror. The non-hedonistic philosopher is best known for his seminal work “Democracy In America,” based on his travels here in the early 19th century.

Though an agnostic, de Tocqueville was discerning. In describing America’s uniqueness (which even then had set it on a course that would make the 20th century the American century) de Tocqueville wrote:

“I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in harbors…; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce, in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and matchless Constitution.

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.”

That’s what Europe has lost. That’s why Europe, as we know it, could disappear in this century. Hedonistic philosophies don’t fill empty cradles.

2007-04-18

Trying something new - using Google Docs to PERMANENTLY put stuff on the net. Well, as long GOOGLE is there...The skinny of this excellent article is: "if lawyers were in charge of the (scientific) truth, we'd still be living in the stone-age."

Misfortune is chasing the Communist Party Nepal-Maoist chief Prachanda perhaps. In a surprising event today Prachanda’s vehicle which he had been using for himself for quite a long time, has been forcibly captured by the one who claims himself to be the real owner of the vehicle. The owner of the vehicle claims that his vehicle was looted by the Maoists some months back along with some diamond jewelries and money as well. The owner of the said vehicle consoled himself when responsible organs of the state and those of the UN assured him that his vehicle will be handed over to him after the Maoist join the government. However, that was not forthcoming.Fortunately, the same vehicle was spotted by the supposed owner today in Bagbazar area in Kathmandu. The owner of the vehicle recognized his property but found the government registration number changed. A minor scuffle occurred between the real and the fake claimants of the vehicle. The real owner somehow or the other took hold of his property as reported by Kantipur Television this evening.

1, School row over Al Gore film

By Liz Lightfoot, Education Editor

Last Updated: 6:34am BST 17/04/2007

Parents who claim that an award-winning film on climate change is inaccurate and politically motivated are threatening a legal challenge over the Government's decision to send it to every secondary school.

The film by Al Gore, the former US vice-president, won an Oscar for the best documentary this year and Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, says he wants teachers to use it to stimulate children into discussing climate change and global warming.

But a group of parents in the New Forest say the circulation of the film by the Government amounts to political indoctrination and is in breach of the Education Act 2002. Derek Tipp, their spokesman, has urged Mr Johnson to stop the film being sent out.

He said: "The film goes well beyond the consensus view and is not therefore suitable material to present to children who need to be given clear and balanced, factually accurate information."

2, Dutch government says Palestinian PM not welcome

Palestinian PM Ismail Haniyeh will not get visa to Netherlands; European Union considers Hamas party terrorist group

The Dutch government on Monday ruled out a visit by Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, saying he will not get a visa because the European Union considers his Hamas party a terrorist group.

Haniyeh's office contacted the Dutch government to enquire about documents needed to request a visa as the Palestinian premier wanted to attend a conference on the Palestinians and Europe in Rotterdam on May 5, a spokesman for the Dutch Foreign Ministry said.

"He will not be granted a visa, should he request one officially," the spokesman said. "Hamas is considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union."

"It is consistent not only to avoid contact with Hamas ministers but also not to let them come to the Netherlands or anywhere else in Europe and spread the message of Hamas," he added.

The European Union has a policy of avoiding contacts with Hamas ministers.

Dutch media reported that Haniyeh had been invited to be the main speaker at a Palestinian-European conference organised by the Dutch-based Palestine Platform for Human Rights and Solidarity.

Danish prison warden talks about a world most of us doesn't even want to think about:

The greatest part of the young men are of non-danish ethnic origin, they have major behavioral problems and a great addiction to hashish.---They get kick out of criminality, which they are not ready yet to give up. They never tried to work and have not wish to try – it doesn't pay enough. Their reaction when they meet challenges or problems in daily life is violence or threats of violence.---... groups of negative, strong inmates force others, often ethnic danes, to do dishes and clean for them.

See the translation of the whole thing!It ain't gonna be easy to be, become old here...

The SS and it´s boss Himmler loved gadgets: he leased IBM (early-) sorting machines. He got them for "elections"... but of course it was used to compile registers of Jews, and other "undesirables".His followers, ups, sorry!, victors, in DDR installed "Selbstschutss-anlagen" along the Iron curtain: remotely or locally (by hapless refugee) triggered SHOTGUNS. This will be the next, logical step in UK. Of course, more human, morphine tipped pellets will be deployed!